The Brides wore Blood – review

Director: Bob Favourite

Release Date: 1972

Contains spoilers

Take a look at the movie poster I’ve headed this review with. Personally I think it is absolutely marvellous and it is about the best thing about this absolute mess of a movie.

The film begins with a guy and his girl in a makeshift bed. He finds a secret compartment in the wall by him and opens it up, finding a small locked chest belonging to his Uncle Carlos (Paul Everett) – who died ten years before. The chest contains a journal that outlines the strange hidden history of his family. This is the last we see of these two as the film goes back in time, showing us the history as laid out by Carlos.

It seems that the DeLorca family was cursed. Carlos’ grandfather was doing an occult ritual that was interrupted and it resulted in him being turned into a vampire and caused him to kill his wife. Concerned about his nephew Juan (Chuck Faulkner), Carlos goes to see a spiritualist named Madame Von Kirst. She then shows him a vision of grandfather in action – so we get a further cut back.

Von Kirst has a plan to rid Juan of the curse, but it will be dangerous. To this end she suggests to a young lady named Yvonne (Dolores Heiser) that she go on a trip to the town where the DeLorca mansion is. Once there, Yvonne and three other girls, Laura (Jan Sherman), Vickie (Rita Ballard) and Dana (Delores Starling) are all invited to visit the house for a tour by mute, hunched servant Perro (Bob Letizia).

What is it about young ladies on the early 1970s. One invite to a house by a sinister henchmen and they all gladly go along. As it is, Carlos turns out to be the perfect host and shows them the mansion without incident. Juan is away at the time and Carlos invites them all round for dinner the next day.

To dinner they go and meet Juan, who drugs Yvonne. Whilst she is taken to lie down, the others assuming she is drunk, Laura says she has to leave – she is meeting her guy in town. Yvonne is taken to bed and the two other girls are convinced to staying with her. Meanwhile Laura hasn’t got very far, Perro has kidnapped her.

Carlos is going to use her in a ritual, as an altar, which will cause Yvonne to become pregnant with Juan’s child and lift the curse. Hold on a second… wasn’t the curse that he would choose a bride, get her pregnant and then kill her. It seems the cure is remarkably similar to the curse itself. Anyhoo, Laura’s boyfriend disturbs the ceremony and all Hell breaks loose.

All hell is some decayed looking guy being sinister and stalking the young lovers whilst Vickie has her throat ripped out, Dana is vampirised and Yvonne is impregnated. This means that Juan becomes a full vampire also and Carlos must try and lift the curse from the unborn child. You know what though, all Hell breaking loose is deathly boring and doesn’t plot very well either.

The vampires are scared of the cross, as it was evil spirits that created them. They can be staked through the heart and sunlight is deadly. They are also able to be confined to their cofins by Von Kirst – so long as no one goes in the room, go figure.

The acting is blooming awful and chief offender is the unnamed actress who plays Madame Von Kirst. Honestly she was so wooden you could have carved her into a stake and dealt with the vampires with her. One never gets a full take on the character but it does seem she is trying to lift the curse – by replicating it.

Other big offenders are Letizia whose sinister henchman is laughable, looking like a mime version of an igor type character. We should also make mention of Starling who, as the vampire Dana is utterly ridiculous – and not just because of the comedy fangs.

The story itself is confused and the film itself so boring it is untrue. I mean this thing really drags. To be honest, with a competent director and cast an interesting psycho-drama could have been made out of the film but on all levels it falls flat.

Never-the-less, I love the poster. 1 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mentions: 100 Years of Horror

This is a series of documentaries, directed by Ted Newsom and narrated by Christopher Lee that looks at Horror through the years. In fairness, I haven’t watched every episode as of yet, but I have watched the specifically vampire orientated episodes: Dracula and his Disciples and Blood-Drinking Beings. The reason this becomes an honourable mention is that the DVD has some 26 episodes and comes in at a mammoth 750 minutes – making the vampire episodes a very small part of the whole.

I am sure that other episodes will mention vampires, for instance there is one dedicated to Lugosi, which is bound to mention them but, as I have looked at the main vampire episodes, I felt it fitting to make this post.

The first episode is dedicated to the Count himself and thus has quite a bit of material regarding Lugosi and Lee. One questions why the documentary makers felt the need to mention other Lugosi vehicles – after all they might have featured vampires but he did not play Dracula in them, that question is compounded by the fact that there is the Lugosi specific episode.

The trouble with the episode, and the other to be fair, is that there are so many specifically Dracula and generally vampire movies out there that the episode barely touches the sides of the subject. That said there are some fascinating little interviews, including archived Lugosi interviews.

The second episode widens into the main vampire genre and one then questions some of the films they mentioned. I can understand mentioning the Omega Man – due to I am Legend, but I disagree that it featured vampires as they state. More odd was mentioning The Devil Bat (featuring Lugosi and bats but not vampires), The Thing from Another World and Planet of the Vampires.

If I had another grumble it was that, other than mentioning Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the first episode and Interview with the Vampire in the second, the documentary avoided contemporary movies, at least in these episodes.

That said, each episode is a nice little watch and, given the length, can be watched in bite sized chunks. I look forward to watching the rest of the series over the coming weeks. The imdb page is here.

Charmed: Bite Me – review – TV Episode

Directed by: John T Kretchmer

First aired: 2002

Contains spoilers


This episode, from season 4 of the series Charmed, was the vampire episode that seems obligatory in such series. The series itself, as I am sure you know, followed three sisters Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), Piper (Holly Marie Combs) and, by this series, Paige (Rose McGowan) who happen to be the charmed ones – three witches on the side of good whose strength lies in their unity, the power of three. I have to admit it wasn’t a series I regularly viewed but it was okay if nothing else was on. When this episode aired the other day, on Living TV, I did go out of my way to watch it for the blog.

The trouble with this sort of vampire episode is that it often gets bogged down in non-vampire related storyline and this one is no exception. We have Phoebe, who has left the familial home to live alone with husband Cole (Julian McMahon), who was a demon and is now, unbeknown to the sisters, the Source – ie the big bad evil. We have the 'is she/isn’t she' surrounding whether Phoebe is pregnant and Piper trying to have a baby with white lighter (read angel) husband Leo (Brian Krause). Cole is trying to consolidate his evil power by drawing the various demon factions together. All this is well and good for the series fan, but I am looking at how this works as a stand alone vampire episode.

It so happens that the Queen of the Vampires (Elizabeth Gracen) has been approached by disgruntled demon Keats (Jay Acovone) offering an alliance against the Source. It seems that the previous Source banished the vampires due to a betrayal. The Queen sends emissary Rowan (Samuel Ball) to test the waters for an alliance with the Source before she decides. We note here that the blinds have to be shut during said meeting, so obviously the sunlight aspects hold in this universe.

When with Cole, Paige happens to turn up and, by eavesdropping with his superior hearing, Rowan discovers that Paige is a charmed one and Cole’s sister-in-law. The vampire Queen hatches a plan. If she can turn Paige then she can use her magic against the Source. Luckily Rowan has arranged a date with Paige – to which he purposefully doesn’t show.

Walking from the club (P3, owned by Piper), Paige finds herself attacked by bats. Now, whilst cgi, it has to be said that with the way they have been shot, these are not crap bats and work remarkably well. Kudos to the series makers for doing this. Paige is rushed to hospital, if she hadn’t been found she would have bled to death.

The sisters are convinced it was a natural, if freaky, occurrence and despite Paige suddenly having an aversion to bright light (in this case high-beam headlights), she is taken home, healed and sent to bed to recover. Cole turns up, however, and sees the hand of the vampires in the attack.

The family go to see Paige and it appears that she is not in her room, until they realise that she is sleeping hanging upside down much like a bat. She awakens, transforms into a bat and flies out of the window… something that causes the remaining sisters understandable consternation.

Through Cole, and the book of shadows (the grimoire of knowledge the girls use), they discover that witches power is useless against vampires but it seems garlic and crosses will hold them at bay. We also discover that if they destroy the Queen they will destroy all the other vampires but save any half vampire – which Paige will remain until she bites someone. Later we discover that holy water will kill a vampire, or hurt a half vampire.

Meanwhile Paige has found her way to the Queen, is immediately loyal and also hungry. The Queen decides her first victims should be the other two witches, which will turn them and give her the power of three to use. The turned Paige looks mighty sassy, it has to be said. We end up with the sisters looking for Paige, Paige hunting the sisters and Cole sending his demon allies after the vampires, unconcerned whether Paige lives or dies.

We do get a staking, and it has to be said that the effect used for the death is somewhat impressive. Indeed the effects are good all the way through and the acting as competent as one would expect from a long running series. The episode does have problems though.

As I said, I am looking at this as a stand alone and much of what happens is great for the series follower but not for an individual watching just this episode. Yes, these things are meant to be watched in totality, but that is not how I am looking at it. The vampire storyline is competent but fairly standard fare lore wise (I did like the idea of the matriarchal familial vampire society, however) and the plot is nothing new.

Please remember, Charmed fans, that this score is for the episode as a stand alone and as such it is competent but nothing overly special. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable mentions – Dan Nastro’s Dracula

Whilst surfing around The Archive I came across this little gem of a freedbie from FUBAR films. Being somewhat short in length, and free to download, I decided that honourable mention was a fairer way to go than a review.

That said the film, which has Drake (Dracula’s pseudonym in this) looking for his love Mina, is of a higher quality than a lot of the straight to DVD rubbish that gets put onto the market. It is a real show piece effort and kudos to the filmmakers for doing it and putting it our for free viewing.

One really interesting part was when Drake is confronted by a cross. As well as turning away in fear the filmmakers put a nice flash over aspect into play, which shows Christian iconography and fully demonstrates why the vampire is turning from what amounts to dime store jewellery.

The film also has quite a shockingly good corpse view of Lucy, Drake’s (just before) midnight snack. That was neatly put together. Combine this with the fact that the piece has been filmed with enough lighting to allow the viewer to see what is going on and you have a neat piece of film to watch.

Not all is perfect, the party could have done with some more extras to make it actually feel like a party was in progress and there is a wobbly stake moment that looks like it is being held to the chest – but hey, I’ve seen a lot worse in films that I’ve had to pay for.

Well worth your time downloading.

FUBAR films have a MySpace profile here.

Kingdom of the Vampire {2007} – review

Director: Brett Kelly

Release Date: 2007

Contains spoilers

So, this is the remake of the 1991 film and I am going to suggest that you look to that review for plot outline, as the plot is virtually the same except for one major change that I am not going to reveal – though this review will contain a hint towards it, just as the film did.

The main thing to change in this is the personalities of the characters and the quality of the production. Now, I am not going to suggest that we have an Oscar winning production on our hands but the quality of this is vastly superior on all levels, effects, edits, filming quality, directing and acting. If you are going to watch this do watch the original first – it will make the experience better.

I said the characters have changed and I really think we should look at that. Director Brett Kelly plays the lead of Jeff and, whilst there is a degree of the whiner still present, Kelly actually makes Jeff seem that much more introvert and a lot less the sulk. Jeff now works in a video store and, from the beginning, is having flashes with regards blood. He meets Nina (Anastasia Kimmett) by rescuing her from bad to the bone boyfriend Bruce (Jody Haucke).

As for Nina herself, the unbelievable wholesomeness has vanished. Nina is a bad girl who falls for Jeff after his white knight moment. She is a heroin user and her and Jeff sleep together – without the fangs moment of the chaste kiss in the original version. Jeff actually tells her that he is a vampire, though she doesn’t believe him.

The biggest change is in mom (Karin Landstad) who is less the bitter old harridan and is played in a seductive, soft spoken but steely manner. That is not to say that she is not abusive towards Jeff, it means that she does it in a soft, manipulative manner for most of the film and this is infinitely more watchable than the performance in the first film.

Through mom we get to hear and see much of the lore. She still beats Jeff with a crucifix, but we see one swing and the scene changes. However we note that she puts a glove on to handle the holy symbol. We also notice, during a dream sequence that Jeff has of a childhood conversation, that she has an old scar that are clearly fang marks. Yet they are meant to be born vampires… makes you think, doesn’t it.

The film introduces the concept of Dupree (Miles Long), Jeff’s father, much earlier on (as the sheriff (Chip Hair) is involved earlier – from when the cookie selling girl (Lisa Aitken) goes missing). Kelly seems to enjoy putting in almost subliminal flashes into the film, but does not over use them. In one of these we see Dupree momentarily – the magic of DVD allowing a decent screenshot.

Other main changes come in with Jeff and mom living in a quite opulent home, rather than the poor white trash home of the first film and the guys that attack Jeff being Bruce and his posse rather than random drunks.

The gore levels are higher. Rather than see a silhouette devouring of a kitten we get more of a clear view, though it still seems un-shocking after Count Yorga, vampire. However, the film seems reluctant to show violence at other times and I suspect this had much to do with budget constraints, to a degree it is good that Kelly was aware of this issue and worked around it but it did jolt when it happened.

All in all this is a much more competent, darker working of the film and the story hangs together better. It is, however, still a low budget flick and has problems. The acting is superior, barring incidental characters who tended to be fairly bad, but it still isn’t fantastic. The direction is better but somehow is lacking in places. The twist to the story is interesting but, despite giving flashes to let us know what had happened, I found myself checking the audio commentary to ensure that what I thought they eluded to had actually happened – much more could have been done with it.

Not terrible, an improvement on the original but not the best film on the market by a long shot. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Kingdom of the vampire {1991} – review

Director: J R Bookwalter

Release date: 1991

Contains spoilers

A little background is required here. This film has been floating around my awareness for a while but I had heard that it was rubbish. After all, there are two comments on imdb and one of them was from the person who plays a little boy in the film (Rory Moushey) and he calls it a waste of space. That is some bad publicity. Now, the fact that a vampire film is meant to be awful has not stopped me watching it but, given the price of the DVD, I had not seen this film.

Recently it was remade and this original film was released as a double feature with the new version. It turned out that it was cheaper to get the double feature disc than get the stand-alone. So the version I have watched for this review is on the same disc as the new version – however I have put the stand-alone cover at the head of the review.

The film itself is meant to have been re-mastered for the double feature set. Well, who knows just how bad the print of the original release was because the one I watched ain’t too great. The film itself was shot on camcorder but that doesn’t necessarily make this a bad movie. It has other aspects that do that job just fine.

The film begins with Jeff (Mathew Jason Walsh) working in a late night store. He closes up and heads on home. As he walks through the door there is blood on the floor. He calls out to his mom (Cherie Patry) and she is sat eating cookies and watching TV. When asked where she got them from she tells of a girl (Christina M Bookwalter) who came door to door selling them. She then says that there is a mess in the kitchen, for him to clean up.

In the kitchen the girl is dead. When he hasn’t cleaned up, the harridan of a mother screeches at him until he does what he is told. As he does so the mother tells him of the things she did to the girl in a graphic way that was just intended to shock. He takes the (all too small) bagged body to the shed and we see that there are other bags in there. Her arm falls out of the bag bloodied and he tastes the blood and then bites the wrist.

The girl starts to move and he hits at her with a hammer and then stumbles from the shed and wretches. The mother can smell the blood on him and mentions, briefly, the kingdom of the vampires – before humanity hunted them down – and how his father was a king, a concept which Jeff denies. Her anger knows no bounds.

As the film progresses we get a brief meeting with Nina (Shannon Doyle), an all too innocent girl, with no sense of clothing, who falls for Jeff. We get the attack on the Halloween boy and his mother (Jo Norcia), tricked into the house and then set upon by mom and the reluctant Jeff. This leads to the sheriff (Tom Stephan) taking an interest as she was his sister-in-law and an interesting moment as he arrives at the house during the day and Jeff seems rather ill - thus he can be in sunlight but it makes him feel sick.

Jeff seems to be going through an awakening, he tastes cookie girl’s blood, attacks some drunken bozos and develops fangs when Nina kisses him. We could ask the question of why it has taken so long for Jeff to develop his vampire nature, given that the sheriff remembers the case of Dupree from when he was a child – a vampire the townsfolk burned to death – who was obviously Jeff’s father.

Mother and son have only just returned to the town, under different names, and perhaps vampires take a long time to mature – the film is not explicit. Jeff himself considers staking his mother but hasn’t got the guts. The relationship with Nina stalls and she goes to his home, and is captured by his mom… leading to the film’s ‘climax’.

Story wise, the idea of mother and son vampire was interesting but not well held together. The two became caricatures. This had much to do with the acting, which we will get to. First I should mention that the effects were poor, but that is to be expected from a low budget flick, in the main the worst excess were hidden by cutting away. A scene where mom eats a kitten, hardly new or shocking given the scene in Count Yorga, vampire, is shown in silhouette.

What lets this down is the acting. The incidental characters are blooming awful and there is no chemistry between Jeff and Nina. Jeff himself comes across as less an introvert and more the perennial whiner and his mother is fun at first but the screaming harridan act gets tired very quickly.

An interesting opening premise but let down by poor scripting, loose storytelling and poor acting. 1.5 out of 10. We will see if the remake can do better.

The imdb page is here.

Vampires in Havana – review

Director: Juan Padrón

Release date: 1985

Contains spoilers

This cartoon, produced in Cuba, is a bit of an enigma. There are aspects I find amusing, story points that are unique, aspects that I find a little distasteful and it uses a sledgehammer to put across its political message.

The cartoon itself begins with a little history lesson regarding vampire society. Vampires have been around for a rather long time – we get representations of a caveman vampire, an Egyptian vampire and vampires in classical Greece. It was not until 1870 when vampire society became organised and split, essentially, into two camps. The American vampires, based in Chicago, were known as the Capa Nostra Society and run by Johnny Terrori.

In Europe the Vampire Group was formed and the first leader was Count Dracula. Dracula had a son called Werner Amadeus who was working on a formula to allow vampires to go out into the sun. In 1905 he thought he had cracked it and Dracula tried it – it failed and he was dusted by the sun. Werner travelled over to Cuba with his nephew, Joseph, to continue his work – rum and pineapple being essential ingredients in his formula.

In 1921 he did crack the formula and tried it on Joseph. The boy grew up acting as a normal human, unaware of his heritage. The formula not only allowed him to go into the sun but also gave him a reflection and curtailed any taste he might have for blood. By 1933 Werner is ready to share his discovery with the world.

Joseph, however, is now known as Pepe. He is a trumpet player and has joined an underground cell opposing the corrupt General Machado who runs Cuba. When we meet him he is in a police Captain’s wife’s bedroom. He has charmed her with his playing and is using her to help him and his cell get to the Captain’s papers to use in the fight against Machado. It does not work on this night, the Captain almost catching him. The Captain is not only corrupt but is portrayed as a misogynist wife beater.

The cell believe that Pepe should try again the next day, much to the disgust of his girlfriend, Lola, who may believe in the cause but not that her man should sleep around to help the cause. The other problem is that his uncle is expecting company.

The European vampires have met with a representative of the American mob vampires. The American’s expect that they will sell their headquarters at Düsseldorf. The mob has become powerful creating speakeasy type places with fake beaches in them for vampires. I did like the look of these speakeasies; we see human booze hounds on a balcony with taps to their veins as they drink and the blood being sold under the name of whichever tipple it might be.

The Europeans dust the representative – they have been told of the formula and are going to sell it as ‘Vampisol’. It was amusing to see the pile of dust grow an ear as it tried to spy after death. The problem they have is the Werner wants to give the formula away for free, believing that all vampires should have access to it. The mob want it destroyed as it will stop the need for their speakeasies. Both groups head to Havana.

Poor old Pepe. All he really wants is to further the revolution and then open his own jazz bar but he has to cope with the knowledge that he is really a vampire, win back the jealous Lola, and escape both the police and the two vampire groups.

As you will have been able to tell, there is a pro-revolution message in this that is hammered home hard. The state is corrupt and only the people can change that. The Europeans and American mob interfere for their own gains. The message was, very much, heavy handed however, perhaps even ham-fisted and ultimately confusing. I say confusing because, in reality, General Machado was removed from power in 1933 – by military-coup – which led to Batista becoming president and it was he who was ultimately removed from power by the revolution. To suggest the removal of Machado was by the people seems either revisionist, mistaken or pro-Batista (which I doubt).

The animation of the cartoon is very basic; it is reminiscent of the animation style of say the Pink Panther series. One might call it stylised, however, if you were being kind. That said I was uncomfortable with some of the racial stereotyping in the cartoon’s style. As you watch the film, however, you see that the dialogue is accusing the capitalist world of being the racists – specifically the English vampire – thus there appears to be an anti-racist message at the film’s heart, albeit in a very small sub-plot. It seemed odd that Padrón would point such a finger at the West and yet use such offensively stereotyped images of black characters.

The cartoon is fast and free with sexual imagery. Pepe’s horn playing has the ability to make a woman’s breasts vibrate and make her underwear miraculously vanish. It is not hardcore, however, and is more seaside postcard in its portrayal. That said, not only is the Captain a misogynist but his wife is a slattern. She might have fallen for Pepe (and that might have been due to his vampiric charms) but we also see her having an encounter with another man later. Obviously she is like that as she is part of the corrupt system, the film seems to say, whereas Lola is worried about how it would look to go into a hotel with Pepe when they are on the run, virtue being more important than danger. The political message just seems to keep getting hammered home and to be fair the base vampire story was fun and didn’t need those aspects.

The vampires die in the sun (sometimes as some of the dust seems to survive as I mentioned) and have no reflections. We get vampires traveling as balls of light and transforming into dogs. At one point we go inside a cinema and this proves to have one of the most interesting parts of the film. Outside we see that Dracula is playing and inside we see a live action film on the screen. I don’t know if this was filmed especially or was from an existent film – I don’t recognise the footage. If you know please comment and let me know the name of the film.

We also discover that silver bullets (or stakes) can be used to kill vampires – except Pepe who can be injured just like any human. When angered bat wings sprout out of their backs. In an entertaining moment Lola ‘Cushings’ a cross together with candlesticks, much to the vampires’ amusement – one then holds up a cross and, then, puts a cigarette out on it. Holy objects obviously mean nothing to them.

The voice acting is poor to average and the subtitles can be a little literal – you’d probably get more out of the dialogue if you are fluent in Spanish. However, where this shines is in the music, which takes the form of a wonderful jazz soundtrack which features Arturo Sandoval.

Score wise it is difficult, assuming that, whilst uncomfortable, the stereotyped aspects were not meant to be offensive and if you can handle the ham fisted political aspects than I would say the unusual aspects of the film and its general madcap nature put this around 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.